Capturing Thoughts Before They Perish

First, you need to know little bit about Steven Covey’s theory of paradigm. He believes there are 3 paradigms: dependent (always rely on others), independent (rely on oneself) and interdependent (become productive by interacting with others, even those they differe with).

Lebanon struggle is a struggle between entities of the three types:

(1) Dependent: Amal, Syrian Socialists, Franjieh, Baathist are dependent. They cannot make their own decision. Always they have to follow someone else for their survival. Among them, Amal has a potential of being indepedent, but unfortunately, Berri is a fox who prefer to appear following Hezbolla/Syria because of fear.

(2) Independent: Hezbolla and FPM are independent. They truely believe they can achieve what they want without dependence on anybody. Even financially, Hezbolla can survive even if Syria and Iran stop supporting them! The problem with the independent is that they believe in “my way or the highway”. They cannot tolerate or understand those who differs with them for they have a strong conviction that their way is the only truthful way.
(3) Interdependence: The 14 of March guys have evolved to become Interdependent! If you look at all parties of 14M you will find that each one hates the guts of the other (Sunni against LF, Druze hates Sunni’s and Maronites, The democratic left hates the Future Movement capitalists! Jumayel hates Jeajea, etc…) but they decided to collaborate driving strength from their differences. This is interdependence.

In my opinion, the 1975-2000 civil war was the evolution of Lebanon from “dependent” to “independence”. The present struggle is evolving from “depednent” to “interdependent”. If 14M prevails, Lebanon will grow in culture and history. If they lose, the evolution will be delayed.

In the same token, the US with Bush Administration is dependent. Europe is independent. Most of the Arab countries are dependent… except for UAE, where interdependence has been practiced since 1991 in Dubai, and 2005 in Abu Dhabi.